Mornings with MAC – Retirement Edition

Get to know the retiring Science Faculty with this week’s Mornings with MAC!

Guest Post by Michael Codrington ’18

Ladies and gentlemen, you must’ve had a lonely Wednesday morning last week without Mornings with MAC and I apologize for that. However, we have an exciting retiring faculty Morning with MAC. I was able to interview 3 Andover greats, Dr. Stern, Mr. Cone and Dr. Watt. With a combined 96 total years of teaching (16+51+29), it’s safe to say they’re veterans of PA. First up is Dr. Stern. Stern taught me for a total of 5.5 weeks when I thought that Chemistry 300 was the way to go. 300 had other plans… So, I eventually dropped down to 250. But, I will always remember Stern for his Charisma and willingness to help.

MC: What do you teach at Andover?
DS: Chemistry 250, 300, 550, and IPs. It’s been varied, but I enjoy it.

MC: How long have you been working at Andover?
DS: I’ve been here for 16 years. Day 1 was a very famous day – 9/11/2001.

MC: Really?
DS: Absolutely, it was my first day at Andover, ever teaching in a high school. I taught very briefly in a Bronx high school for a couple of months, but that was temporary. The all school meeting was on that first day of class. It was a beautiful Tuesday. The seniors were yelling 02, 02, 02!

MC: What brought you here?
DS: Before I was at Andover, I was selling high quality chemistry instruments, Spectrometers. It was about a 20,000 dollar instrument and I sold to Temba Macabela. He taught the organic chemistry class and organic chemists love this thing called Infrared Spectrometers.

MC: Where did you go to college? What did you study?
DS: I went to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and got a bachelor of science degree. I could’ve gotten a bachelor of arts and taken different courses, more english and history courses. But the bachelor of science degree meant I had to take more physics and chemistry. It was very rigorous. Then I went to grad school and got a PhD in Analytical Chemistry.

MC: What is your favorite thing about Andover?
DS: The energy of the students. Every September, I would see new faces and new students and meeting them the first couple of weeks, slowly learning names and 9th grade boys soccer. Haha, That was a fun experience.

MC: If you weren’t studying/teaching chemistry, what other discipline would you be in?
DS: Probably math. I love math, I love plane geometry. I could teach you some algebra, not like these Phillips guys, but I know a decent amount. I loved how it was a puzzle. You figure it out with all your information. It’s great.

MC: What’s your favorite movie?
DS: I’ve got a lot of favorites, you wouldn’t know ’em though, so I love “Casablanca”. “Saturday Night Fever”, took place in Brooklyn about the New York scene. I love the James Bond movies of course. “12 Angry Men”, took place in the Bronx, about a big court case and really shows the prejudices from the time and that are still there in the Bronx. I don’t know I could watch a movie yesterday and forget the name.

MC: Do you consider yourself an easy or hard teacher?
DS: Grade-wise I’m fair but hard. I could use a pun, I’m very stern…
MC: …
DS and MC: Hahahaha!
DS: But yeah, I grade a little difficult, but I understand that I’m teaching high school kids college chemistry and it blows my mind when I see one of them in a theater production or something like that.

MC: What’s one thing that a lot of people don’t know about you?
DS: They don’t know that I love to dance and rock and roll and that my favorite rock and roll band is The Stones.

Next on the roster is Mr. Cone. Cone boasts 51 total years of Andover teaching experience, having been able to both teach and teach alongside many Andover alums like Ms. Elliott ‘94, Mr. Ventre ‘71, and fellow science teacher Mr. Faulk ‘00.

MC: How long have you been working at Andover and what do you teach?
TC: I’ve been here 51 years.

MC: Wow, that’s a really long time.
TC: Hahaha! I’ve taught first year Biology for many years, the name keeps changing. I’ve taught AP level Bio, I’ve taught Biology 500. I’ve taught term-contained courses. The last 20 plus years I’ve taught term contained courses for seniors, mostly. Animal Behavior in the fall, Microbiology in the winter and Ornithology in the spring.

MC: What brought you here?
TC: Well, I was overseas in the Peace Corps and my father was retiring from the Navy, he was a doctor at Harvard, and since I was coming back from the Corps, I wanted to live somewhere in New England and I applied to teach at a bunch of these New England Preparatory Schools.

MC: Where did you go to college? What did you study?
TC: I went to Trinity College in Hartford and I majored in Biology and minored in Education.

MC: What is your favorite thing about Andover?
TC: Wonderful student body. It’s always exciting, active, interesting students. Science faculty has always been superb. A beauty of a school like this is you have a number of teachers in the same department.

MC: If you weren’t studying/teaching biology, what other discipline would you be in?
TC: I enjoy history a lot, I think it would probably be the history department.

MC: What’s your favorite movie?
TC: Uh.. a recent movie or?

MC: It’s up to you I don’t really know, haha!
TC: My favorite movie when I was a kid growing up was “High Noon” with Gary Cooper – 1951. Also loved “African Queen” with Humphrey Bogart.

MC: Do you consider yourself an easy or hard teacher?
TC: I’d say somewhere in the middle. Students do what I ask them to do and they’ll do well. If they take good notes they should be fine. I want them to do well, that’s the point of a teacher. It’s like being a coach. When my students took APs, I wish I was in there with ’em, I mean I obviously couldn’t be, but I wish I could.

MC: What’s one thing that a lot of people don’t know about you?
TC: Don’t know about me? When you say a lot of people you mean like you or like…

MC: Yeah, I mean uhh.. Like.. I don’t know…
TC: Hahaha, it’s ok. Well in class, we joked about having animals and I had a black mamba as a pet. There was this long black snake in Liberia that was my favorite.

MC: That’s insane.
TC: It was a party, haha!

MC: Thank you, Mr. Cone it was great to meet you.
TC: You too, have a good one.

Last on the roster is Dr. Watt. I learn physics in the classroom next to Watt everyday during 4th period, but I have never really met him before. I immediately regretted that because he is hilarious. I sat down with Watt in his office at Gelb 222.

MC: How long have you been working at Andover and what do you teach?
DW: Physics and Geology. 29 years, which is nothing compared to Mr. Cone.

MC: Where did you go to college? What did you study? What brought you to Andover?
DW: I went to college in a place called Dalhousie in Canada, I got my bachelors and masters in Physics. I got my PhD at Harvard. Then I was a research fellow at the University of Colorado for a year then I was a research fellow at the seismological lab at CalTech for a year. I was trying to raise research funds for graduate students and it was hard for me to raise money and do science, so I decided why not come to some place with great teachers and great students.

MC: What is your favorite thing about Andover?
DW: The enthusiasm of the students.

MC: Favorite song?
DW: Nothing. Oh dear, I’ve got nothing, next one.

MC: If you weren’t studying/teaching biology, what other discipline would you be in?
DW: Likely Mathematics.

MC: What’s your favorite movie?
DW: Harold and Maude

MC: Do you consider yourself an easy or hard teacher?
DW: Yes

MC: Hahaha! What?
DW: Haha! I try to cover the material, but I also try and be sympathetic of the students because I know they have a lot going on and it’s hard so I’d have to say I’m reasonable.

MC: What’s one thing that a lot of people don’t know about you?
DW: I’m from Canada.

That concludes Mornings with MAC for the 2016-2017 academic year. It’s been real and you can look out for a new edition coming in the fall of 2017. Have a great summer!